Generally, murders do have evil written on their face. Especially if you know they killed someone. I do understand their thinking here, but I don't necessarily agree that current games lack maturity. I think what they are trying to say is that games today lack depth, in both plot and character development. I'd agree more with that, and agree that Heavy Rain is pushing those boundaries. Both kinds of games can exist.

Am I the only one who thought that was anthony in the header?

Yeah lets help the industry get selious. Throw in a random sex scene and love element involving two characters who hardly know each other. Make the ultimate badguy TEH INTERNET itself.
After the dreadful 'twists' of Fahrenheit/Indigo Prophecy Im really cautious with my excitement for this game. I had an incredible time with Fahrenheit till they totally spat in my face by taking the game into wtf territory. Either they thought it was a revolutionary idea or some exec looked at the game and said "This won't do, the plot is too solid and mature. Gamers want sex and violence and mugging". And the dogshit that is Fahrenheit was born.
I pray to god that Quantic Dreams stick to Heavy Rain's interesting concept all the way through this time.

I'm glad they are doing this. Just look at some of the most evil people in history - Hitler and Stalin. Hitler did look evil when he was making his big grand speeches, but before that he looked like a coot with a funny mustache. Stalin looked like a old man who belonged in Pepperidge farm commercials, or commercials about the "diabetus". Yet those two men directly killed more people than anyone else in history.

I hope Heavy Rain makes believable characters.

And yet most studies I've seen say that the average age of gamers is around 30.

http://www.wired.com/gamelife/2008/03/38-percent-of-g/
http://edugamesblog.wordpress.com/2008/07/23/esa-survey-malefemale-gamer-ratio-is-6040-average-age-is-35/

Just most because games have fantastical/imaginative stories doesn't mean that they're ZOMG 4 KIDZ. Transcending reality doesn't mean that their stories are inferior to whatever this elitist asshole came up with.

"Generally, murders do have evil written on their face."

Presuming you mean "murderers," do you have any evidence whatsoever to back up this claim? I don't really know a ton about the subject, but I remember that often times people are shocked to learn who is a serial killer.

@danthuman

No, you were not!


He's got a point to bad he doesn't make games himself.

fuckin' add comment buttom



oh well, HR is certainly lookin amazing, just as unique as any Team ICO game

Kefkaesque: Are you really going to dispute that the overwhelming majority of games exist to emulate Hollywood action movies which are themselves systematically designed to appeal to the (most lucrative) demographic of teenage men?

I'll be picking up Heavy Rain day one, and it's going to break my heart when it joins the cabinet of titles that could have made a creative impact if they hadn't underperformed financially and proves once again to everyone listening that it's just not worth the effort.

@ John Johnson

If the game tells you, it's pretty obvious. When it's in the plotline, you know he's evil, that's the basis of the game. I'm speaking in game terms here, not reality.

I like to try and keep the two separate whenever possible.

kefkaesque


you cant be serious about your argument

its not about games takin place in a fantasy realm, its about characters as deep as a puddle

I like the way Cage thinks. I really hope Heavy Rain is a great game.

@pl0x kthanxbai

And yet there are tons of characters out there far deeper than "puddles" while still existing in fantasy worlds. If you can't find them then that's your loss, characters don't have to be "realistic" to be interesting or deep.

Patrick to David Cage: "Make a real game then, that does so, or shut up"

Sorry, heavy rain is awful from what I have seen of it, everything is clunky from the amount I have played and seen, seriously in the eurogamer demo, you could press one button and get the same outcome of those that used every button prompt.

A QTE is not a proper game.

Sounds like David Cage never Indigo Prophecy, or if he did he's avoiding it because the plot and presentation is similar to his game.
Oh and origami is an outdated and overused story element, it doesn't even add depth to characters anymore, stop using it.

You know what? Sometimes I want Dr. Wily. Sometimes I want to rip a monster in half with a gun-mounted chainsaw. Sometimes I want the 50-foot-tall Earth Defense Force aliens.

Maybe I'm just sniffing an undertone of "games as art" here, but this guy is coming off as a douche.

@kefkaesque

Elitest asshole? Where did that come from?

The average age of gamers doesn't prove anything on the maturity of games. You certainly can't justify saying that games are mature because people who play them are not as young as used to be the case. That's absurd.

As far as imaginative settings go - sci-fi and fantasy - the more fantastical and wonderful the world (game), the less reasonable it becomes. At this stage any audience has gotten used to the suspension of disbelief and thinking in "game logic", so when dark or realistic themes are insinuated it's kind of a jarring experience but by no means does that raise the realism of the setting to a believable level.

For instance, when Aeris died a ton of players were shocked and saddened, but then we're reminded of a talking cat sitting on a mog, or a bunch of people who look as ridiculous as Cloud or Barrett, which detatches us from this fascinating chocobo world. Themes notwithstanding, the setting is not relatable, not reasonable.

On the other hand take the nuke scene from Modern Warfare (a game that did so many things RIGHT): a more realistic setting, a more believable world, and a much more jarring experience because of these. I don't know how many people would agree with me, that the nuke scene in COD was a better gaming moment than Aeris dying - probably a minority - so I can only speak for myself.

I know how annoying it is to see a chunky post like this in the comments section when I'd rather read something succint and profound. I'm quite interested in this subject, and I'd love to read more opinions on it, is all. Anyway!

The big problem with thinking we want games to grow up is, you never really stop liking boobs and explosions. And some of us have to mull over enough tough questions just in day-to-day life. What's wrong with simple escapism? I'd say more, but I think Char Aznable said it best.

@marxistforlife

Since when has origami become an overused story element? Are there really any connotations present there?

@Byronic Man

Yeah elitist asshole, like you the moment you said that fantasy worlds are inferior to realistic ones.

I have a life, when I'm playing a game or watching a movie or something I want to see something superior to real life, something more interesting. Realism is not superior to fantasy, they're just two different settings, and if you're so worn down in life that you can't relate to something that's not just like you or your world then that's your loss.

Kefkaesque, again, you really don't have to call someone an elitist asshole just because you perceived that he was insulting your delicately crafted D&D games or your nostalgia-fueled eterna-wank over the brilliant nuances of Final Fantasy VI

That you're so insecure speaks more to the fact that we as gamers know in our heart of hearts that our beloved industry doesn't respect our intellect enough to even attempt to consistently create stories with any kind of sophistication or human incisiveness. I know you claim to have found a few diamonds in the rough as far as "fantastical/imaginative" games go (which is so ludicrously irrelevant that it's what made me think you have some underlying issues here in the first place), but to argue with any volition that that is the rule rather than the exception is to insult both your and my intelligence more than the most visceral, thick-skulled Gears of War cutscene ever could.

To the rest of you: maybe I'm at fault here for assuming that every Destructoid reader implicitly agrees with Anthony Burch (a premise that should have been disproved to me immediately with the advent of the HAWPcast), but what exactly is being argued in dismissing this guy? He is not some bullyish representation of the entire video game complex like the Bobby Kotick of creativity. He is the voice outside of the normal spectrum, saying that with very few exceptions, games aren't in the business of maturity and depth. And he's right.

So, Char Aznable, to say that sometimes you want to turn your brain off and indulge in the guttural, cartoonish tropes of video games - that's great, but it's ridiculous to portray doing so as an occasional circumstance. What you're describing is what video games are and it's people like David Cage that are the ones on the fringe for desiring something more. Don't dare act as if he's somehow persecuting you for enjoying the ninety-nine games out of any given hundred that exist to entertain first and provoke thought dead last.

Guy in header is the Origami Killer: CONFIRMED

@Carl Sagan

Bladerunner, Neuromancer, Hardboiled, Ghost in the Shell, I can't think of any more off the top of my head, all I was trying say is that it is a boring route to go when trying to define a character. (origami is precise, murder is precise, control, giving life to an intimate object, emulating life, etc)

@SansJason

Are you honestly going to pick gears of war as your example of fantasy games being inferior? Try picking a story driven game not one that's widely known for being completely about having fun and not really giving a damn about the story.

Good job being so increadibly intelligent to be able to know everything about my security and underlying real life problems from some internet argument text by the way, you must be the most insightful person on this planet.

No, I picked Final Fantasy VI as my example of fantasy games being inferior.

I picked Gears of War as my example of the quintessential "video game" game, full of sound and fury, et cetera, cough.

The same way you picked it as your example of two words that are capitalized in my post, allowing you to skim for a moment before isolating that one instance in a way that lets you refute what was not my point while deftly avoiding addressing all the things what were.

@kefkaesque
@SansJason

Go pursue each other in real life, this two-person flame war is one of the saddest more opinionated things that I have ever read, you should be ashamed.
There's an amazing feature called "Private Messaging", use it next time.

@EggmaniMN

Obviously I disagree. Having played a level or two with the character I started to get used to him and his mates, the way people do with Gordon Freeman. "You see zero impact"? Do you forget the big crash or the entire lead up? The part where you crawl out of a wreckage as shattered as you were, looking up at that horrific sight and then toppling over having bled out or from radiation poisoning or whatever.

Aeris' death, on the other hand, seen coming from a mile away (goes without saying, I know) and almost completely forgotten about wrt the plot not ten minutes later. It would have been more realistic - more shocking - if you were to take out all the mogs and chocobos and gun arms and instead have everyone wearing those hats that have unbrellas on them. More realistic.

In other words, it was not a world that ressembled our own. It was not logically consistant with our world, it was not relatable in a reasonable, non-imaginative way. I needed to engage my imagination in order to accept the world, not any rationality or reasoning (if you'd try to accept the ff7 world accoring to reason, you'd pop). Im not saying I wasn't immersed in the game or the world. I was. You seem to have gotten the wrong impression, mate.

And because I imagine it coming up, I'm not slamming the use of imagination when it comes to games. Definitely not. I love it's use more than almost anything. But I'm sick that we've gotten to a point - a perfectly acceptable point unortunately - that imagination can be used as a get out of jail free card. (And I love hacking and slashing and DMC as much as the next guy, but if we don't challange the status quo of the medium, it won't ever change (and I got sick of DMC after the third game).)

@SansJason

I can only agree. Why have we continually accepted subpar (downright terrible) writing quality as the norm for video games? Why hasn't the medium attracted very many intelligent writers, if any?

People will defend the stories of some games. Some people will say Final Fantasy or Persona has quality writing. This is kind of pathetic. Other people will say Planescape: Torment or Half-Life or Mass Effect, and while there are certainly bits and pieces of those titles that have some artistic merit, I can't help but feel that these are just pale imitations of great literary works and films.

I don't take interactive media seriously as an art, and I won't until it gains some self respect.

However, I will say that I fully expect that future to hold grand things for the medium.

@Kefkaesque

I never said fantasy setting are inferior. You probably couldn't read me right because your dick is too small. Prick. Anybody can post this site with stupid insults, see? Why don't you try showing other people some respect. I mean, fucking respect.

Hey marxistforlife, I also have an asinine, reactive hatred of words and thought, particularly when not facilitated by typos for the ease of the reader, the way you do so thoughtfully; maybe we should form a club?

Full disclosure: I respected your point about origami, despite disagreeing with it. Now, however, you are my enemy.

While I love the concept, the one thing that scares me about this game is the dialogue. Some of the trailers I've seen have featured dialogue that just seems a little...off (the "You go, girl!" bit comes to mind, as well), and for a game that will focus so heavily on story, it really needs to be water-tight. I hope this is something that will be worked out before the game's eventual release, but there is always the fear that parts may be lost in translation.

@SansJason

Except that FF6 is far superior, though that's my opinion which I accept as an opinion, unlike you who apparently thinks that their word is god since it's proof that one genre is inferior to another. So you want to talk about game developers accepting the intelligence of gamers? They often don't as stories are a background most of the time to gameplay, but you throwing away fantasy games as inferior when they're the ones that often try to put the story first is only detrimental to that in the first place. Also somehow Heavy Rain doesn't seem like the answer to me, it make create a deep interesting realistic story to you, but a glorified QTE game doesn't respect us either, it may as well be a choose your own adventure movie. Is that irrelevant too? Well maybe before you go putting it on your shelf of unappreciated games as you mentioned before, maybe you should see if it's actually passable in the GAME department first as we all will since it's not even out yet.

By the way I find it hilarious how you're trying to talk down to me when I haven't insulted you and yet you've called me insecure, a D&D dork (which I've never played or mentioned, so good job there), and throwing away my opinions as simple nostalgia and inferiority. Before acting like you're the paragon of the gaming community, maybe you should stop looking down on the rest of it so much.

Eh, the SRS BSNS gamers who want their dark stories that take place in contemporary society with no elements of fantasy or imagination can have their games. I'm not going to judge them because they choose to play something I would find extremely boring. I mean I seriously got to hand it to these gamers who for some strange reason, dislike imagination in their games. I mean I thought most gamers enjoyed imagination, but I guess I was wrong. Makes me wonder what they were doing with their childhood. Ah well, I guess to them, real life>fantasy even in video games, the ultimate fantasy provider. ;P

Me, I'll stick with my fantasy games. As long as the characters are believable and ones I can relate to on an honest level, that's all I need. I already have to deal with news about rape, murder, poverty, tragedy, and war on a daily basis, if I had to put up with that in every single video game as well, I'd probably go insane.

I will also agree that this game has already shown signs of painful dialogue.

@SansJason

Thank you, for phrasing those nagging ideas in my head I couldn't quite formulate!
Also lol

kefkaesque

cage is not talkin about that


in other interviews he talked about games and movies like UP and ICO very positively and he said those works inspired him



both UP and ICO are the antithesis of realism, however both are original and unique works in their own respective medias




cage is aiming towards a more mature, realistic game becuz such scenario is hardly seen on games, think about it, most games praised by their story take place in unrealistic and even fantastical scenarios


FF, Persona, Planetscape, Mass effect, Metal Gear, Half-life, etc



the real world also has mysteries and drama, i think thats what cage is aiming at, a game with a story as close to reality as it can

@SansJason

I am not a native english speaker, thank you for the enemy status.

@Byronic Man

Right you didn't say that is was inferior, just that a realistic plot and setting are better at creating drama and a better experience overall, and that you can't relate to characters who wouldn't fit into our own world.

I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and say that you really don't feel that they are inferior, but it realistic settings do everything better, then how exactly is fantasy not "inferior"?

Kefkaesque, I agree that I was too derisive of you initially, and I do apologize for insulting you, despite strongly disagreeing with both your opinions and how you relate them.

Byronic Man, don't tell anyone, but I have a crush on you.

Fantasy isn't inferior, it's just TERRIBLY executed in video games. It's been done beautifully by a handful of incredibly talented authors, but it's never been done right in a game. Except for maybe Shadow of the Colossus.

And @kefkaesque

You say you've come across deep characters in video games. Such a concept is new to me; can you be specific? Who are these allegedly "deep" characters that apparently persist in fantasy games and of whom I've never been made aware?

It's a self-delusion that the game industry "makes video games for kids." The game industry makes games for 20-30 year olds.

Not that I'm necessarily disagreeing with wanting that shift, but I think it's pretty delusional to think that games like Bayonetta are targetting teenagers. I mean, sure, yeah, some of them will get it and certainly it's attractive to them. But if you look at gaming ages, you'll see the customer base is well over the teens.

How do I know this man is genius? Because he's always saying what I'm thinking almost verbatim. And we all know I'm a mute genius. Thank Eris for men like David Cage.

after i played ICO and SOTC i simply fell in love with the idea of games being used as an artistic medium


the level of interactivity they offer creates a level of immersion that simply cannot be emulated in other means, its a shame such tool is so underused

@Deny Everything

Are you kidding? Bayonetta is solely targeted toward teenagers.

kefkaesque

to put it in words you might understand



its easier to relate the player to a character from this dimension/time period, that doesnt means fantasy scenarios should be scrapped, its all part of the vision of the writer/director/developer, but the fact its easier to relate the player to realistic scenarios remains, since we perfectly know how reality works

@Carl Sagan

Seeing how that is an opinion thing I don't really see the point in listing out characters for you since you're opinion is clearly already different.

But if I had to pick a character that you might not try and cut down right away I guess I'd go with Andrew Ryan from Bioshock, or The Boss from Metal Gear Solid 3 (and before anyone laughs at the MGS series' convoluted plot, MGS3 itself takes place before all that insane shit happens, and itself has a clearly understandable plot as something separate from the rest of the series)

This is me rolling my eyes at the Half-Life, Ico, and Shadow of the Colossus references that were inevitable here. Hey, have you checked out that Braid game?

I only took issue with the fact that this guy is mocking the industry at large when his company has put out two games in 10 years. Release your transcendent masterpiece first, then you can talk shit on everyone else.

Well, I'm not sure that "deepness" really is all that subjective. All it really measures is to what degree a person's comments assess the nature of the human condition. It's not hard to tell the difference between airheaded entertainment-level writing and writing with a distinct purpose. The problem, I think, is that games are entertainment first and a lesson second, or never. I suppose that's just the nature of the industry, presently.

Even characters like Andrew Ryan and the Boss (whom I admit are significantly more interesting than your average game character) barely scratch the surface of true commentary on bare existence.

I've always found it easy to define art, but some people have a very difficult time accepting that art can be criticized in any way. I really don't think humans are all that complicated; art can always be explained.

What am I even talking about now?

Char Aznable

you mean he cant critize the game industry yet yet any no-name with a blog cant trash talk anything related to games, devs and companies? thats pretty fuckin funny



no offense my great overlords, Dtoid Editors